ScanSoft OMNIPAGE DIRECT Installation guide

OmniPage Direct

OmniPage Direct adds the power of OCR directly to any Windows word-

processing, spreadsheet, or communications program. Working within

your application, you simply choose Scan text... in the File or Control

menu. Scanned text then appears in your document just as if you had

typed it yourself. Direct is virtually automatic: just point and click to

recognize a single paragraph or multiple pages.

Chapter 1 Installation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 1

Be sure your scanner is working with the manufacturer’s scanning

software before you install Direct.

After running the SETUP software installation program within Windows,

creating a Windows swap file, and opening Direct, the Scan text...

command will appear in the File or Control menu of your Windows

application.

Chapter 2 How to Scan Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 7

Scanning text is as easy as pulling down the File or Control menu and

choosing Scan text.... The Scan text dialog box lets you scan immediately

or set options for special features such as recognizing parts of a page or

different languages.

This tutorial guides you through the simplest scan and also explains how

to use the Partial Page features.

Chapter 3 Commands and Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p. 13

This chapter explains every command and setting within Direct. Topics

are listed alphabetically.

0 OmniPage Direct

Chapter 4 How to Improve Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .p. 31

This chapter tells you the tricks for speeding up Direct and for improving

text-recognition accuracy. It explains how to recognize text from poor-

quality documents such as multiple-generation copies and newspaper

pages. Adjusting the

Brightness

setting is the easiest way to improve text-

recognition accuracy.

Chapter 5 Technical Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .p. 39

This chapter lists supported scanners and provides information that may

help you solve any installation or operation problems. Error messages are

listed as well as instructions on how to contact product support. Product

support and information for all Caere products is also available in the

Caere sections of both America Online and CompuServe (Keyword

CAERE).

CAERE CORPORATION

100 Cooper Court

Los Gatos, California 95030

European offices:

CAERE GmbH.

Ismaninger Straße 17-19

81675 Munich, Germany

OmniPage Direct Windows Version 2

are trademarks of Caere Corporation. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to

distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Such designations appearing in this manual have been

printed in initial caps.

Product Serial Number:

_______________________________________________

(from Disk #1 label)

Installation 1

Chapter 1

Installation

This chapter describes how to install Direct and set it up to work with your

applications. The chapter has six sections:

• System Requirements

• Software Installation

• How to Create a Windows Swap File (Virtual Memory)

• Using WordPerfect

• Upgrading to Other Caere Products

• Special Topics

You must have at least an 8MB Windows swap file (virtual memory) to run

Direct.

System Requirements

2 Installation

System Requirements

To run Direct, you

’

ll need the following system:

•

’

386 or higher computer.

• A Caere-supported scanner installed and working with your sys-

tem. See Chapter 5, Technical Information.

• 14MB available hard-disk space.

•

RAM Minimum:

4MB RAM total system memory and an 8MB

Windows swap file (virtual memory).

•

RAM Recommended:

8MB RAM total system memory and a 12MB

Windows swap file (virtual memory).

• Microsoft Windows-compatible mouse.

• Windows Version 3.1 or higher.

Be sure your scanner is installed according to the manufacturer

’

s

instructions and is working on your system. Use the scanning software

supplied by the manufacturer before you install Direct.

Software Installation

Installation 3

Software Installation

Please install Direct from the program disks. Do not install from copies.

To install Direct software:

1 Start Windows and open the Program Manager window.

2 Insert Direct disk #1 in your computer.

3 Choose

Run

in the Program Manager

File

menu.

The Run dialog box appears.

4Type A:SETUP (or B:SETUP) in the edit box and click

OK

.

The installation program will prompt you for information as it

installs Direct.

5 Fill out the warranty registration card while the program copies

files to your computer.

6 Exit Windows after the installation program is complete.

7 Create a Windows swap file.

See the next section for instructions.

8 Mail in your warranty registration card.

To learn how to run Direct, see Chapter 2, How to Scan Text. To set up

Direct to load automatically whenever you start Windows, see Load OCR

when Direct is launched in Chapter 3.

How to Create a Windows Swap File (Virtual Memory)

4 Installation

How to Create a Windows Swap File

(Virtual Memory)

To run Direct, you need at least 8MB of free disk space set up as a

Windows swap file (virtual memory). For best performance, use a

Permanent

rather than a

Temporary

swap file and make it as large as

possible.

The swap file acts as virtual memory disk space that is used as if it were

volatile memory (RAM). Information is stored temporarily on disk rather

than using up RAM. This allows you to run more programs than you

could with RAM alone. However, using virtual memory is slower than

using RAM.

For more information about virtual memory, see the Windows User’s

Guide. For more information about the Windows Swap file, or if you have

any difficulty creating a swap file, see the chapter “Optimizing Windows”

in the Windows User’s Guide.

To create an 8MB Windows swap file:

1 Close any open applications.

2 Double-click the Control Panel icon in the Main window of the

Program Manager.

3 Double-click the 386 Enhanced icon to display the 386 Enhanced

dialog box.

4 Click

Virtual Memory...

to display the Virtual Memory dialog box.

5 Check the entry after

Size

.

• A swap file equal to or larger than 8192 is sufficient. Click

Can-

cel

to return to the 386 Enhanced dialog box and click

Cancel

again. Close the Control Panels.

• A swap file that is smaller than 8192KB must be changed. Pro-

ceed to step 6.

6 Click

Change>>

to expand the dialog box.

7 Select a new drive in the

Drive

drop-down list if you want the

swap file to be located somewhere other than on the default

drive.

If you cannot find a drive with 8192KB of free space, you need to

delete files to free up space.

8 Type at least 8192 in the

New Size

edit box.

9 Click

OK

and exit the Control Panels.

Using WordPerfect

Installation 5

10 Click

Yes

in the dialog box that asks if you are sure you want to

make changes.

11 Click

Restart Windows

to restart immediately.

Do not press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.

Using WordPerfect

If you are using pre-6.0 versions of WordPerfect, you must modify the

Direct setting.ini file. This file tells Direct how to paste text into these

applications.

1 Open Windows’ Notepad or other text editor.

2 Open the setting.ini text file located in the directory where you

installed Direct.

The default installation directory is c:\direct.

The first six lines look like this:

;classname=(1:doc,2:spread), (1:paste, 2:no), (0:file, 1:system), (wparam-paste)

;OpusApp=1,1,1,2229 ;use this for word 2.0 (RTF)

;OpusApp=1,1,1,2266 ;use this for word 2.0b (RTF)

OpusApp=1,1,1,108 ;use this for word 6.0 (RTF)

;WordPerfect=1,1,0,265 ;WordPerfect (RTF)

WordPerfect=1,1,0,0 ;WordPerfect 6.0 (RTF)

A semicolon in front of a line deselects that line.

3 If you’re using a pre-6.0 version of WordPerfect, delete the first

semicolon from the line that reads:

;WordPerfect=1,1,0,265 ;WordPerfect (RTF)

and add a semicolon in front of the line that reads:

WordPerfect=1,1,0,0 ;WordPerfect 6.0 (RTF)

4 Choose

Save

in the File menu to save your changes.

Reverse the process if you later upgrade software versions.

Upgrading to Other Caere Products

6 Installation

Upgrading to Other Caere Products

If you upgrade to another Caere product such as OmniPage Professional

and your scanner is not listed in the Select Scanner dialog box, follow these

procedures:

1 Install your new Caere application.

2 Copy the following files from your OmniPage Direct directory to

the new Caere product directory:

*.chw (any file with the extension .chw)

*.pxw (any file with the extension .pxw)

pixdflt.dll, pixperm.dll, pixpnr.dll, and pixpcx.dll

mphase.dll

scnmgrtw.exe

scanmgr.ini

scanmgr.lst

3 Start your new Caere application and select your scanner in the

Select Scanner dialog box.

Special Topics

Dashboard Incompatible with OmniPage Direct 2.0

Dashboard, the desktop manager from HP, is incompatible with this

version of OmniPage Direct.

Graphics Applications

Direct does not work with graphics applications such as Paintbrush,

CorelDraw, etc.

Using OmniPage Direct and a Visioneer Scanner Version 1.0

Before running Direct, please copy the following files from your

OmniPage Direct directory to your Visioneer (MaxMate) scanner

directory:

maxcaere.ocr

caerenew.dll

caereold.dll

caeredir.dll

How to Scan Text 7

Chapter 2

How to Scan Text

This chapter guides you through the basic steps of using Direct to scan and

recognize text.

We assume you have installed Direct according to the instructions in

Chapter 1 and that you know how to work in the Microsoft Windows

environment. Not all Direct features are described here; for a complete

description of any command or setting, see Chapter 3, Commands and

Settings.

To use Direct, follow these steps:

• Open the Direct program.

• Open your word-processing, spreadsheet, or other application.

• Choose

Scan Text...

in your application’s File or Control menu.

•The

Scan Text...

command is in the Control menu of some applica-

tions. Open the Control menu by clicking the bar in the upper-left

corner of your application’s window.

• Adjust settings and click

Scan

in the Scan Text dialog box.

• Select parts of a page (optional).

After recognition, the scanned text appears in your application.

Unrecognized characters are represented in your text file with a tilde (~).

Step 1 Open Direct

8 How to Scan Text

Step 1 Open Direct

1 Open the Direct program to add the

Scan Text...

menu item to

your application’s File or Control menu.

2 Double-click the Direct icon in the Windows Program Manager.

Unless you have changed your Windows setup, the icon should

be in the Caere Applications program group box.

The minimized icon will appear in your Windows desktop win-

dow.

Step 2 Open Your Application

1 Open your word-processing, spreadsheet, or other application.

Direct only works within an open application.

2 Place a page in your scanner.

If you don’t know how to orient the page correctly, check your

scanner’s manual. Be sure your scanner is turned on.

Step 3 Choose

Scan Text...

Choose

Scan Text...

in your application's File or Control menu.

The

Scan Text...

command is in the Control menu of some applications.

Open the Control menu by clicking the bar in the upper-left corner of your

application’s window.

Step 4 Adjust Settings and Click Scan

How to Scan Text 9

Step 4 Adjust Settings and Click

Scan

A dialog box appears after you choose

Scan Tex

t...

.

Direct is designed to automatically determine the best way to scan a page.

You can simply click

Scan

and the default settings will accommodate most

scanning situations.

Settings in this dialog box and in the Options dialog box let you customize

Direct for scanning your particular documents. This step explains how to

use the

Partial Page

feature, which lets you select parts of a page for

recognition. Other settings are described in Chapter 3.

1 Highlight the

Partial Page

icon.

Full Page is the default setting.

2 If you wish to manually adjust the

Brightness

control, click

Options...

and then deselect

Auto

Intensity

.

The

Brightness

control will appear in the Scan Text dialog box.

Manually adjusting

Brightness

can improve recognition accuracy

and speed; see Chapter 4, Improving Performance.

• If a page has sharp, distinct characters printed on good-qual-

ity non-reflective paper, set the brightness slide to the middle,

normal setting.

• If a page has thin, broken characters, move the slide towards

Darken

.

• If a page has thick, run-together characters, is printed on po-

rous paper such as newsprint, or is printed on glossy paper,

move the slide towards

Lighten

.

If desired, click

Options

to adjust other settings.

3 Click

Scan

.

Step 5 Select Parts of a Page

10 How to Scan Text

Step 5 Select Parts of a Page

If you highlighted

Partial Page

, an image of your page and a set of tools will

appear after the page is scanned. The tools let you draw zones around

parts of the page, order the zones for recognition, and zoom in or out.

1 Click on the

Draw zones

tool and then enclose each area you want

recognized with a selection box by holding the mouse button

down and dragging the mouse.

Zones will be recognized in the order you select them unless you

use the

Order zones

tool (the # symbol). To adjust a zone, first

select it by clicking on the

Draw zones

tool and then clicking on

the zone. Then move the mouse pointer to a selection box handle,

hold the mouse button down, and move the mouse.

The window will look like this:

Zoom in

Zoom out

Draw zones

Order zones

Erase zones

Start or stop

the

recognition

process.

Open the

Options

dialog box.

Stop

recognition

and reset

zones.

Rotate the

image 90°,

180°, or 270°.

Step 5 Select Parts of a Page

How to Scan Text 11

A number appears in each zone indicating the order in which the

zone will be recognized. You may draw up to 99 separate zones.

2 Click on the

Order zones

tool (the # symbol) to change the order in

which the zones will be recognized.

The numbers in the zones will disappear.

To reorder the zones, click on the zone you want recognized first.

The number 1 will appear in the zone. Then click on the next zone

you want recognized; the number 2 will appear. Continue until

the zones are appropriately ordered.

3 Click on the

Erase zones

tool and then click on a zone selection

box.

The selection box will be erased – not the zone itself.

4 Click

Recognize

to start recognition.

During recognition, text blocks are painted gray and then black on the

screen as Direct works. The Recognize button turns into an Adjust button.

If, during recognition, you want to change the way you drew or ordered

zones, click

Adjust

. The

Partial Page

window will reappear and you can use

the tools again.

After recognition the text will appear in your application just as if you had

typed it yourself.

Step 5 Select Parts of a Page

12 How to Scan Text

Commands and Settings 13

Chapter 3

Commands

and Settings

This chapter explains how to use Direct commands and settings. It is

organized alphabetically. Settings within a Direct list box are explained

under the title of the list box. For example, you can find descriptions of

Letter

and

Legal

page-size settings under the Size heading.

About Direct

The About Direct box shows the current software version you are using,

any copyrights in effect, and the program's registered user, company

name, and serial number.

Adjust

Clicking

Adjust

lets you change settings after a scan has started but before

recognition is complete.

For example, imagine you selected several parts of a page for recognition

and clicked

Recognize

. During recognition, you notice that you forgot to

select a particular part. You click

Adjust

(during recognition, the

Recognize button turns into an Adjust button); recognition stops and you

can select parts correctly without having to re-scan the page.

Auto Intensity

Select this to let Direct automatically set an optimal brightness setting with

grayscale scanners.

This feature is especially useful when you scan text printed on a colored

background. It also works well when you scan “copies of copies” that have

large gray areas.

Automatically Launch Direct

14 Commands and Settings

Recognition is faster with this option turned off. If you scan high-quality

documents with crisp, black letters printed on white paper, deselect

Auto

Intensity

and use the manual

Brightness

control.

Automatically Launch Direct

Select this if you want Direct to automatically start up whenever you open

the Windows program.

Your win.ini file will be altered to include a

load=c:\opdirect\direct.exe statement.

Brightness

Select different brightness settings to lighten or darken a scanned image.

This control is available if

Auto

or

Normal Intensity

is deselected in the

Options dialog box.

The

Brightness

setting is the most important means you have to affect the

accuracy of text recognition. It accounts for variations in paper quality,

print quality, and scanner peculiarities. It acts like the brightness setting

on a copier.

Set brightness by moving the mouse arrow to the square in the slide,

holding the mouse button down, and moving the square toward the

desired setting. Or, click on the arrows to the left or right of the slide. Use

the numbers in the square as references for future documents. The caret

(^) represents the scanner’s normal setting.

If a page has sharp, distinct characters printed on good-quality non-

reflective paper, set the brightness slide to the middle, normal setting.

<CR> at End of Line

Commands and Settings 15

If a page has thin, broken characters, move the brightness slide toward

Darken

.

If a page has thick, run-together characters or if it is printed on porous

paper such as newsprint, or if it is printed on glossy paper, move the

brightness slide toward

Lighten

.

To evaluate brightness settings, watch the Character Window as Direct

performs text recognition. For a description of the Character Window, see

Chapter 4, How to Improve Performance.

<CR> at End of Line

Select this if you want a hard carriage return inserted at the end of each

line of text.

Use this setting if you’re scanning lists, lines of code, or other text where

you want each line to be an individual paragraph when it appears in your

word processor. This feature will not work with lines of text shorter than

a certain length; you’ll need to experiment to find the length minimums

with your particular pages.

When this is deselected, Direct will look for extra space between lines of

text on the scanned page and interpret space as a paragraph break. It will

insert a hard carriage return at the paragraph break. If text is continuous,

it will assume that the continuous text is one paragraph.

Dictionary

16 Commands and Settings

Dictionary

Select a dictionary for use in spell checking and with the Language

Analyst. The dictionary should correspond to the language of the

document you’re scanning. The American-English dictionary is named

useng.ndx; the British-English dictionary is named ukeng.ndx.

Foreign-language dictionaries are available from your local Caere dealer

or by calling Caere at (800) 535-SCAN or (408) 395-5733.

Document Type

The Document Type list box lets you select various font characteristics of

your document.

Fully formed

Select this when you scan conventionally printed text characters.

Dot matrix

Select this when you scan characters printed in draft mode by a 9-pin dot-

matrix printer. Do not select

Dot matrix

for pages printed in near-letter-

quality mode or printed by a 24-pin dot-matrix printer.

When you are finished scanning with the

Dot matrix

setting, be sure to

deselect the setting. It is only appropriate for draft-mode, 9-pin dot-matrix

printed material.

Enable Hot Key

Select this if you want to start a scan by pressing a key or key combination.

Certain applications may crash if you click

Scan Text...

in the File or

Windows Control menus. You’ll need to enable a hot key to start a scan

within these applications.

Choose a hot key by first selecting or typing in a key in the

Enable hot key

list box. Then click on Ctrl, Shift, or Alt to set up a key combination. For

example, if F2 appears in the list box and Ctrl and Shift are selected, then

you can start a scan by pressing the Control-Shift-F2 key combination.

Full Page

Click the

Full Page

icon to let Direct recognize all the text on a scanned

page. Direct will determine column structure according to the

Page Layout

setting in the Options dialog box.

If you want Direct to only recognize parts of a page, click the

Partial Page

icon. After the scan, you’ll be able to select specific parts you want

recognized. See Chapter 2, How to Scan Text.

Hardware Options

Commands and Settings 17

Hardware Options

With some scanner installations, you’ll need to type information about

your scanner’s port address, speed, or other parameters. If the

Hardware

Options

section of the Scanners dialog box is gray, you don’t have to do

anything.

If

Hardware Options

is not gray, check your scanner’s documentation for

details on how to determine your scanner’s port address and other

parameters. These parameters are usually included at the end of the

DEVICE=YOUR_SCANNER entry in your config.sys file.

Help

Help is available by choosing

Help...

in the Direct icon Control menu or by

pressing the F1 function key while within a Direct dialog box.

Choosing

Help...

in the Direct icon Control menu will bring up a list of

topics available in the Help program. Pressing the F1 function key will

bring up context-sensitive Help; a list of topics will appear explaining all

the settings in whichever Direct dialog box is currently open. The Direct

help program conforms to the Windows 3 Help standard.

When an index appears, simply click on the topic you need help with and

help text will appear.

Ignore Abbreviations

Select this to have the spelling checker ignore words with a capitalized

letter followed by three or fewer lowercase letters and a period (for

example, Mrs., Dr., etc.).

Ignore All CAPS

Select this to have the spelling checker ignore entirely capitalized words of

four characters or less (for example, acronyms such as HUD, USDA, etc.).

Ignore Proper Nouns

Select this to have the spelling checker ignore words that do not begin

sentences and that have capitalized first letters (for example, He saw

Jane

throw...).

Languages

18 Commands and Settings

Languages

Select this to choose one or more languages for text recognition.

Direct will recognize additional characters (such as circumflexes, umlauts,

etc.) unique to a particular language. You may select more than one

language by clicking on different selections; however, for faster

recognition, select only the minimum number of languages you need.

Load OCR When Direct is Launched

Select this if you want Direct to load the optical character recognition

(OCR) program in your computer’s memory when Direct is started. Direct

will take a few seconds to load OCR, and then there will be no delay the

first time you scan a page.

There are two parts to the Direct program. One is the part that shows

dialog boxes and drives your scanner. The other, the OCR portion, is the

part that actually analyzes a scanned image and converts it into text. The

OCR part uses a lot of your computer's memory.

Normally, Direct waits until you scan before it loads OCR into memory.

The first time you scan, it takes a few seconds for Direct to load the OCR.

Once loaded, OCR stays in memory until you close the program.

However, you can use the

Unload OCR after n minutes of inactivity

setting

to clear OCR from memory without closing the Direct program.

Multiple Pages

Select this icon if you want to scan more than one page.

After a flatbed scanner scans a page, a prompt will appear asking you if

you want to scan more pages. If you use an automatic document feeder

(ADF), the prompt will appear when the ADF is empty.

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